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A Fistful of Dollars movie

A reworking of Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo (61).” This Italian made Western, filmed in Spain, began the craze of the so-called Spaghetti Westerns. Clint Eastwood plays ‘The Man With No Name,’ in the first of the three films made with the same theme (the others were: “For a Few Dollars More”(65) and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” (1966)).

Clint was on TV doing the Rawhide series and jumped at the chance to go to Europe to make these films when both James Coburn and then Charles Bronson were offered the parts by director Sergio Leone, but wanted more than the $15,000 available. The films became popular in Europe where Clint became a big star, and three years later United Artists bought all three of ‘The Man With No Name’ films and showed them with great success in America.

The film is a no message one, but where violence is glorified by the hero who is as amoral as the villains. This kind of attitude changed the way Westerns were made. It’s an entertaining film, gore and all, its only drawbacks being the poor dubbing job and that Leone hasn’t perfected all his moves yet in a smooth way. Yet this film, not as rewarding as his others in this series, still has the style of the director’s later works, plus the same themes of graphic violence, a laconic hero, and the thrill of gunfights galore.

Clint arrives in the dusty Mexican border town of San Miguel, where visitors just don’t come without wanting something illegal. An old bell-ringer tells the newcomer that in this town folks get to be either rich or dead. Clint, while riding through town on his mule, is shot at by the gunmen of the Baxter clan. He soon learns from bartender Silvanito (Pepe Calvo) that there are two warring gangs in town: the Baxters and the Rojos. They control the gunrunning and liquor business, and are in an uneasy truce. The Baxters consist of: Sheriff John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy), his shrewd business-minded wife Consuela (Margarita Lozano) and their dumb son Antonio (Bruno Carotenuto). The rivals are the Rojo brothers: Ramon (Gian Maria Volonté), Esteban (Sieghardt Rupp) and Benito (Antonio Prieto). The most trusted gunman of the clan is Chico (Brega). Both sides have many hired guns, but the Rojo family is the stronger clan. Clint decides he’s clever enough to play them off one against the other, and try to get all the money he can from both sides. He hires himself out with the Rojos, and to earn his pay he kills the gunmen who shot at him. Clint chomps at the end of his cigar without smoking it, says little, wears a Mexican poncho, and is always with his trusted .45s. He makes an imposing figure, as he’s tall, bearded, and mean looking.

Clint sees the possibility of big money coming his way when he witnesses Ramon Rojo and his gang kill a Mexican cavalry unit for their gold. He steals two cavalry corpses and tells each side to watch out for the other, and thereby gets them into a shooting war. This results in lots of corpses for the friendly coffin maker in town. But this scene was shot in a shoddy way, as it was hard to comprehend that the two gangs were so stupid that they would so easily believe that the stiffs they were fighting over were real.

Clint does a good deed by rescuing the beautiful Marisol (Koch), who is being held hostage by Ramon. He slays the Rojo gunmen guarding her and she’s free to go to her son and husband. For this he gets tortured by Ramon, but escapes to watch the Rojo brothers burn down the Baxter house and kill all of them. Then Clint returns to get into a shootout with the Rojos, saving Ramon for last. He then rides off with the gold, instead of with the pretty girl.

In this Western parody, there’s some humor behind all the choreographed violence and there’s also a passable Ennio Morricone’s score to instill a sense of melodrama. What makes this mythical film noteworthy, is that it serves an historical purpose as the start of a new trend in making Westerns with heroes who are not always that good.

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Dead Man movie

  • Author: admin
  • Filed under: Drama, Western
  • Date: Feb 11,2008

ohnny Depp stars in this simple story of an unassuming young man who finds himself caught up in extraordinary events over which he has no control.

At first glance, that description seems to fit Depp’s ‘95 flick “Nick of Time” as much as “Dead Man” - but “Dead Man” is different . . . to say the least.

Played out in an easygoing, ambling manner, with stark black-and-white cinematography that gives a lift to its matter-of-fact, natural, yet quirky style, the film contains many startling visual moments and a few terrific performances.

And it’s nice to have a movie during the summer that amiably moves the audience along, instead of pushing it at breakneck speed.

But “Dead Man” is also a Western, and anytime you have a genre film conceived by someone like maverick writer-director Jim Jarmusch, you should expect the unexpected.

In this case, however, what Jarmusch delivers is truly unex pected. “Dead Man” is surprisingly bland. And it becomes more dull - and more grotesque - as it moves along.

Depp stars as William Blake, a mild-mannered accountant from Cleveland who heads West in the late 1800s, where he inadvertently becomes a hunted outlaw with a killer reputation.

That’s about it for plot, though there are subplots galore.

The opening sequence is one of the more striking, as Blake sits quietly during his long train ride West, obviously somewhat nervous. Through a series of blackouts, we observe a variety of weird characters who surround him, and they change as often as the passing scenery we see through the train’s windows. (Everytime Blake nods off, then awakens, someone new is sitting across from him.)

When he arrives in the Western town of Machine, Blake heads straight for Dickinson Metalworks, where he has been promised employment. But when he gets there, he discovers the job has already been filled.

In despair, Blake spends the last of his cash on liquor and is taken in for the night by a lovely young woman he meets in the saloon. This leads to a killing, and though it was committed in self-defense, Blake is forced to hit the road.

As the film progresses, Blake finds himself hounded by both the law and vicious bounty hunters. He also takes up with another dis-enfranchised character, an American Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer) who was educated in England and who believes that Blake embodies the spirit of the famous dead poet William Blake.

Farmer steals the show here, though he does get competition from a number of players in smaller roles - chiefly Robert Mit-chum, as an irascible tycoon, Lance Henriksen and Michael Wincott as a bickering pair of mismatched gunfighters and Iggy Pop as a cross-dressing mountain man.

Filmmaker Jarmusch, best known for the much-better “Mystery Train” and “Night On Earth,” among others, allows the excesses in “Dead Man” to get out of hand to the point that they become distracting - especially the gore. He’s at his best when he simply allows the oddball dialogue to move things along, or when his camera speaks with effective visuals, punctuated by silence. (There is also a spare, offbeat guitar score by Neil Young, which embellishes the action - such as it is - quite nicely.)

As you may surmise, “Dead Man” is not a movie to see for its narrative strength. This is a film that relies heavily on mood. And as such, it’s a matter of taste. Fans of Jarmusch may want to boost the two-star rating a notch, but the unconverted are not likely to embrace this one.

“Dead Man” is rated R for violence and gore, sex and nudity, profanity, vulgarity and drugs (peyote).

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Dances with Wolves movie

Has the magic of cinema lost its wonder? The older generation, brought up on Saturday matinees in smoke-filled fleapits, have matured into Bogey bores and John Wayne reactionaries. The younger generation, high on CGI hype and techno trash, don’t care that modern romance is market researched and artificially inseminated into Julia Roberts.

Considering this, Kevin Costner’s achievement with a three-hour subtitled Western about a solitary Union officer going native on the frontier plains is nothing less than miraculous. He broke every rule in Hollywood, ignored statisticians, experts and plot doctors to do what he wanted. The last time an actor was given such freedom was when Marlon Brando processed 60 hours of One Eyed Jacks and couldn’t cut it.
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Everything about the film spells disaster. It’s too long. It’s a Western. It’s about Red Indians. It’s subtitled. It’s organic. And in this sugar-free greenhouse environment, where ethnic roots are fashionable again, soft focus shots of painted actors, riding bareback through dawn mist, are a recipe for nausea.

However, Costner has the courage of his convictions and, in these circumstances, convictions count. Unlike so many young filmmakers, he makes no reference to genre stereotypes. The Western exhausted its cliches and died in parody. Costner works the vein, as if ignorant of its history. He lacks pretension, arrogance and affectation.

John Dunbar is a Union officer, who becomes a hero in an act of suicidal stupidity during the American Civil War. After the peace, he is allowed to choose his next post and decides on the furthest fort in the frontier lands. He is not an ambitious soldier, nor a particularly intelligent one. He is inquisitive, practical and happy on his own.

The fort turns out to be a deserted huddle of broken down shacks in a bare valley, surrounded by rolling hills. He stays there alone for months, with enough stores and ammunition for a small garrison, and no one to talk to but his horse and a skinny wolf that visits every evening at a safe distance.

When the Sioux come, they are not friendly. They treat him with suspicion, even hostility. Dunbar behaves like he does with the wolf, encouraging and gentle, wary and patient. The Sioux don’t understand what he’s doing there and yet the wiser ones know he must be the first of many and so worth preserving as a source of information.

What happens, through a series of incidents, is that Dunbar becomes accepted by the Indians and slowly integrates into their lives. This is a natural evolution, based on mutual respect. Even his love of Stands With A Fist (Mary McDonnell), a white woman captured by the tribe as a child, already a widow and hardly able to remember the language of the pale face, takes time to grow.

The Sioux are not romanticised. Dunbar’s need of them is understandable in his isolation and their tolerance of him changes from nervousness to generosity, because of the nature of the man rather than any desire for his superior weaponry. When Dunbar writes in his diary: “Every day ends with a miracle here,” his words have true meaning.

What shines through is the integrity of the film. Costner’s performance has a modesty that adds credence to Dunbar’s actions. “I knew for the first time who I really was,” carries absolute conviction.

The magic of cinema has not lost its wonder. Costner found it. And gives it back.

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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid movie

William Goldman’s elegiac script does a pretty good job of convincing us that Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) were the original Rock stars of the old West. After all, the Hole in the Wall Gang is at least as cool a name as the Hollies or the Crickets. Paul Newman’s Butch is the lead singer, lyricist, the brains of the outfit, and what else is Redford’s pistol savvy Kid than the original bad ass ace lead guitarist? Their lives, as portrayed here, are nothing but a romping tour of celebrity excess. Rob a bank, go to the cathouse, rob a train, go to a cathouse. God knows neither of these guys had any intention of ever getting a real job. A real job to Butch was when he was a rustler! They make up cool names for themselves like Bono and Sting did, and they sort-of share a wife, Katherine Ross’ Etta Place. As you’d expect Sundance, the body, sleeps with her while the fast talking, always plotting Butch gets to wax poetic and entertain her mind. Butch and Sundance are nothing less than the Beatles to the foreboding Rolling Stone doom of the posse that will eventually catch up to them.

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” is actually sort of a three-in-one serial western comedy. The first act establishes the characters. Sundance gets to show off his rapid facility with weapons, while Butch sits back and enjoys the change of heart that comes over a man when he drops the name Sundance into the equation. We get to see Butch and his gang when Lurch from the Addam’s Family steps up to challenge his authority. Butch, always thinking, kicks the poor bastard in the balls. We get some enjoyable train robbing scenes with an endlessly amusing sequence between Butch and Woodcock, the most dedicated geek security guard in the history of the world. The whole thing comes to a glittering crescendo when the “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” sequence pays homage to the future of both the bicycle and the music video.

Then the real world comes crashing in. Part Two: Butch and Sundance vs. the Super Posse. Apparently fed up with their nonsense, the law eventually forms their own Super Group to track our heroes down. When the duo split off from the rest of their gang, and Butch asks the stunned Sundance how many of the posse are following them, he is told all of them. For the better part of twenty minutes, when none of Butch’s tricks even remotely work, Sundance keeps an admirable faith in his partner. “You’re the brains Butch. You’ll think of something.”

When they narrowly escape, the duo decide to exploit some new territory in Part Three: Butch and the Kid Go To Bolivia. A bad idea that just gets worse and worse as Butch and the Kid struggle with Spanish, get jobs as payroll protectors (!), and walk slowly to their fate. “Bonnie and Clyde,” which came out just a couple years earlier, also focuses on some doomed outlaws, but in that movie fate was dark and certain. Here the guys aren’t even phased by the sympathetic law man who scoldingly warns them that, “Your times is over and you’re gonna die bloody and all you can do is choose where!” Why spoil the fun until we get to see the guys go up against, like, 5000 Bolivian Militia Men. The film is so sad to see its affable heroes and good times go that it can’t bear to see them shot down. The movie ends almost the same way Porgy and Bess did. It’s not likely that Porgy is going to make it across the Country on that skateboard, but if you’re a true believer you will never doubt it. After all, maybe they did somehow manage to escape, and if they didn’t it sure was fun while it lasted.

Newman and Redford seem so established as a duo it’s a wonder that they only made two films together. Can you imagine how many vehicles Danny Glover and Mel Gibson would have pumped out had they had two movies that big? Paul Newman’s Butch is probably the most genial character ever portrayed on the big screen. He’s always smiling, talking and enjoying the ride no matter where it takes them. Without the more serious overtones of one of those John Ford westerns it’s perhaps a little easier to just take in the beauty of the scenery, a taut, well-meaning script written from legend, and a movie so gorgeously photographed that almost any shot would look good up on a wall in your den. Possibly the most likable movie ever filmed.

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Bandidas movie

In the history of really silly wigs, Dwight Yoakam’s long, crimped black hair in Bandidas has gone and snuck its way into the top ten. It’s part of the silliness of the film that stops it from being a truly terrible movie. That being said, there’s no other compliments I can ratchet out for this sucker.

It’s the old west and things aren’t well. Tyler Jackson (Yoakam) has used a six-shooter to take over much of the land in Mexico, and wants to use all of this to make connections and money through big time land developers. He makes a mistake when he shoots the father of Maria (Penélope Cruz) and poisons the wealthy father of Sara (Selma Hayek). After some squabbling over class, they decide to pair up as bank robbers and steal all of Jackson’s money, getting tips from retired bank robber Bill Buck (Sam Shepard, why?). They eventually pair with a forensic psychologist (Steve Zahn) who starts falling for both the girls as they plan to breach Jackson’s big vault.

Entertainment isn’t in short supply here but freshness, in any form, is. Many will no doubt defend it as “escapism,” which by all means is fine. Bandidas, however, is not escapism. The film never asks us to give over, never allows us to accept its personality, and its action as grandiose enough to make us not care about the story. Every scene is so obvious and so familiar that it never allows us even the smallest amount of surprise (even Armageddon had that). Call it Wild Wild West with women, except even that movie had crazy computer graphics to keep you interested.

Hayek and Cruz work well together, but with a bunko script by Luc Besson (how the same brain that made The Professional spewed this out is beyond me) and by-the-books directing from Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg, they don’t have much to work with. Steve Zahn, a great sideman, is completely pointless to the film in almost every aspect. The first scene has Zahn studying a crime scene, but he is ultimately used as a simple reason to have a love story. Worse than that, the love story is limp as an overcooked noodle. There’s one scene where the girls practice kissing on Zahn, which Hayek steams up with ample talent. Besides that scene, all the eroticism that Hayek and Cruz are notorious for bringing to films is sadly absent. What is left is a heist western that is devoid of thrills, sizzle, or any real humor. Well, except the wig. I love that wig.

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Back to the Future Part III movie

At the close of Part II, Marty’s at the end of Part I, as lightning strikes the clock tower and sends the DeLorean into spacial limbo. He needs to find Doc Brown, because he’s trapped in the wrong time zone, although the Doc thinks he’s sent him to the right one.

When Marty explains that he’s back from 2015 only seconds after disappearing in 1955, en route for 1985, the Doc hits the deck. Even scientists can’t handle that kind of confusion. On recovering, they discover a letter in the Doc’s house, written to Marty in 1885, telling him that the DeLorean needs repairs and is hidden in a cave in Monument Valley.
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How the Doc ended up in a previous century and what he did there and why he liked it is another story. They go to Monument Valley, find the cave, blow it open and repair the car. While there, they notice a graveyard, with the Doc’s name on one of the headstones. The date of his death is only six days after the date on the letter.

Marty decides that he must go back to 1885 and stop this happening. If he could arrange his mother and father’s meeting at the high school prom in 1955 and so save his own birth, he has a good chance of keeping the Doc alive 70 years earlier. Except for one thing. Biff the bully is now his great grandfather Mad Dog Tannen, the meanest gunslinger in the West.

What follows is not the further adventures of Marty McFly, but the comic romance of Doc Emmett Brown. As a spoof western, the film relies too heavily on pastiche and reruns of former scenes, done cowboy-style. Even Mad Dog finishes up under a load of manure, like Biff in Part I, and Marty’s weakness for the chicken taunt is exploited ruthlessly.

Modernisms are played with. After his arrival, Marty is befriended by his ancestors, Seamus and Maggie. When asked his name, he can’t tell them, and so says, “Clint Eastwood,” which leads later, when avoiding the murderous intentions of Mad Dog, to an old-timer in the saloon announcing, “D’ya want everyone to remember Clint Eastwood as the biggest yellow belly in the West?”

As usual, the problem is how to get home. Saving the Doc from Mad Dog’s bullet is one thing and untangling him from an infatuation with the prissy schoolteacher (Mary Steenburgen) another, but now the DeLorean is out of gas, they have to answer a chilling question. If fuel injection engines haven’t been invented, let alone petrol, what will make the car go fast enough to break the time barrier?

The film retains its Heath Robinson imagination, although, being in frontier country, tools are limited. The western genre, with its classic cliches, tends to bog down the story, leaving Michael J Fox in a state of permanent surprise and Christopher Lloyd’s Doc taking the initiative.

Despite magnificent set pieces and superb, if limited, special effects, this final episode in the trilogy doesn’t match its predecessors, ending too cosily with the comforting message that “anyone can change their future”.

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American Outlaws movie

Les Mayfield’s “American Outlaws” is a retelling of the Jesse James legend targeted toward the Restless Youth of Today. You know this because it’s filled with dopey anachronistic dialogue, the action sequences are so carelessly worked out that it’s impossible to figure out who’s doing what, from where, or why, and it features a Moby song. It also reassures us that James was a supernice guy, with principles and everything. He was also kind of like a rock star, but with a gun. And he shot people, but he didn’t really mean it. Picture 1860s Missouri as Ft. Lauderdale during Spring Break and you’ve got the idea.

Really just a marketing tactic with a plot, sickly and pale, trailing wearily in its wake, “American Outlaws” is a listless mess. An ensemble adventure featuring a bevy of ostensibly hunky male leads — among them the Irish actor Colin Farrell, acclaimed for his role in last year’s “Tigerland,” as Jesse, and Gabriel Macht as his older, smarter brother, Frank — the picture lurches along uncertainly in jerky fits and starts. The setting is the post-Civil War South. The James brothers, along with the help of their pals the Younger brothers (Scott Caan and Will McCormack) and assorted other ne’er-do-wells, flit about the Missouri countryside robbing banks and trains willy-nilly, parading around constantly in public but never getting caught.

But their motives are pure: The evil railroad magnate Thaddeus Rains (played by Harris Yulin in primo Simon Legree facial hair) has been trying to buy up Missouri farmland at ridiculously low prices, thus ruthlessly forcing families off the property. The last straw is when the Jameses’ mom (Kathy Bates, in a sassy, eye-rolling performance that seems to be sending up the whole movie) perishes after a group of Rains’ thugs blows up her house.

That does it! The only thing left for the Jameses and the Youngers to do is to trample the countryside stealing money and terrorizing citizens. Detective Allan Pinkerton (Timothy Dalton, valiantly trying to come off as something livelier than a piece of cardboard) has been employed by Rains to push the railroad company’s agenda on citizens and to capture the James-Younger gang; mostly, he just watches their antics, frustrated and amused.

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